Citizen Emperor (76 page)

Napoleon had created a number of satellite kingdoms in order to rule over Europe more effectively – Joseph in Naples and then in Spain; Louis in Holland; Jérôme in Westphalia; Murat in the Grand Duchy of Berg and then, with Caroline, in Naples; Eugène in Italy; Elisa and her husband, Prince Bacciochi, were given the Kingdom of Etruria (incorporating part of modern Tuscany). It was indeed a system remarkably similar to the Carolingian model in which the brothers and sisters reigned over the far reaches of the Empire. Though these satellite kingdoms were ‘given’ to his brothers and sisters, Napoleon could just as easily take back what he gave, generally ignoring the domestic interests of the states concerned. The most egregious example of this was Holland. By November 1809, Napoleon had made the decision to annex the kingdom and to attach it to the Empire, undoing the little popularity Louis had managed to build up and increasing Dutch dislike, if not hatred, of the French.
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Louis was virtually kept under house arrest in Paris for five months from the beginning of December 1809, before he was allowed to return to Holland. While in Paris, he sent a letter ordering Holland to be defended by flooding it, and especially to resist an occupation of Amsterdam. Napoleon was furious when he found out; over the coming weeks and months Louis eventually gave in to his demands. When Louis was finally allowed to leave for Holland at the end of April, a king in name only, and faced with a looming French occupation of his capital, there was a final act of defiance. He actually convoked a council of war to debate whether he should resist, but was wisely dissuaded from acting rashly. On the night of 1–2 July 1810, Louis abdicated in favour of his son (Napoleon Louis), left behind a proclamation
and ordered his carriage.
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Not being possessed of a particularly gracious physique, he fell into a ditch as he was walking to his carriage. Wet and covered in mud, he then disappeared into exile.
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For a couple of weeks no one knew where he had gone; he travelled in the company of his aide-de-camp and his captain of the Guard, as well as his dog, Tiel, first to Teplitz and then to Graz in Bohemia under the pseudonym the Comte de Saint-Leu. In spite of Napoleon’s summonses, Louis refused to return to France. On the contrary, in 1813 he took up residence in Switzerland, seeing a chance to regain his old throne, and wrote to the magistrates of Amsterdam offering his services.

We do not know what Napoleon’s siblings may have thought of the annexation of Holland but it obviously did not bode well for their own thrones nor did it enhance the impression Europeans may have formed of the Bonaparte family. In a letter Joseph addressed to his brother, the first in a long time, he lamented ‘the dispersion of a family once so united, the change that has come about in the heart of my brother, [and] the gradual weakening of such an immense glory’.
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It was a thinly veiled jibe. Napoleon had to have total control over the affairs of his relatives’ governments. He constantly harassed and criticized his brothers and sisters in letters that were sent to the capitals, Amsterdam, Madrid, Naples, Milan, Florence and Kassel. Murat, as King of Naples, received missive after missive that was scornful, bitter or likely to hurt his pride, depending on the circumstances.
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And yet he had done a relatively good job in difficult circumstances, managing to consolidate his control over Naples, eliminate resistance in Calabria and defeat an Anglo-Sicilian offensive under General John Stuart, all the while introducing a number of reforms. But Napoleon was unable to recognize the real accomplishments made and refused to allow Murat any semblance of independence.
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The situation was similar for Napoleon’s other relatives. Jérôme too was deeply upset at the way in which his brother treated him. In August 1810, only a few weeks after the departure of Louis from Holland, Napoleon decided to annex outright the northern coastal regions along the North Sea and the Baltic. Part of this coastal region fell under the rule of Jérôme; he was to lose about 600,000 souls and some of the richest areas in his kingdom. Napoleon informed his brother of his decision by a brief note, which simply stated that it was necessary to place these territories in French hands.
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Jérôme was furious; it was with great difficulty that the French ambassador in Kassel, Charles-Frédéric Reinhard, persuaded him not to go to Paris to demand compensation. Instead, he sent a letter demanding several territorial indemnities. The letter’s tone seemed to amuse Napoleon, who supposedly said on reading it that if Jérôme had an army of 300,000 men, he would invade France.
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Nor did it alter Napoleon’s behaviour towards his brother in any way: the annexations went ahead. Napoleon did not even bother to inform Jérôme of his decision to annex the northern coastal regions; he learnt of the fate of his kingdom through his ambassador to Paris.

To treat his younger brothers this way was one thing, to treat Joseph with the same condescension was another. In the same way that Napoleon had no time for Joseph’s complaints when he was King of Naples, so too did he ignore the real difficulties Joseph faced when King of Spain. Joseph did not always like being told what to do by his younger brother, and sometimes complained publicly about him (which always got back to Paris).
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In fact, Napoleon’s behaviour towards his brothers was typical of the way he behaved towards everyone – that is, he hid his true intentions. Joseph would be ‘of no consequence’ (
peu de chose
), he said, if he were not the Emperor’s brother.
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By the beginning of 1810, Joseph was king in name only. Napoleon had essentially taken direct power out of his hands and given it to a number of military governors, placed in charge of provinces, who were answerable to Napoleon alone. On top of that, Andalusia was given to Marshal Soult as viceroy. Joseph was essentially at the mercy of a group of generals, most of whom despised him.

The summer of 1810 was the height of Napoleon’s territorial reach: he ruled directly or indirectly over about 40 per cent of the total European population. The Empire contained forty-four million subjects, all under the same administrative and judicial systems (the Code Napoleon was in principle applied all over the Empire).
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In addition, the vassal states that fell under Napoleon’s sway – the Kingdom of Italy, the Confederation of the Rhine, the Kingdoms of Naples and Westphalia, and the Duchy of Warsaw – comprised another 33–35 million subjects. Here too the Code Napoleon was applied, although often in a watered-down version. The nature of the Empire changed during the decade that it endured. At first it was to be a federated empire.
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When this arrangement did not work, Napoleon moved towards a unitary empire with a uniform law code.

The birth of his son could potentially have changed all that; it would no longer be necessary to leave those thrones in the hands of his relatives. Eventually they could all be transferred into the hands of his son, thus creating a unified empire. By the summer of 1810 Napoleon was already contemplating dissolving the satellite kingdoms and replacing them with a European government modelled on imperial Rome.
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A
senatus consultum
passed in February 1810 made Rome the second capital of the Empire, and stipulated that all future emperors would be crowned first at Notre Dame in Paris, and then at St Peter’s in Rome (before the tenth year of their reign).
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It was an evident echo of the Carolingian Empire.
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With this in mind, preparations were undertaken in Rome to receive Napoleon for a second coronation, which was supposed to take place in either 1813 or 1814. Gardens were planted on the Pincian Hill and dubbed the Gardens of Caesar the Great. The Quirinal Palace was rearranged to accommodate the Emperor, the Empress and the King of Rome. A medal was even struck to commemorate the (forthcoming) occasion with the device: ‘The imperial eagle returns to the Capitol’.

The Phantom Alliance

‘Napoleon tyrannized kings’, asserted one critic, ‘in the same way Robespierre tyrannized the people.’
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His attitude towards Alexander is a case in point. Relations between France and Russia had deteriorated almost as soon as the ink on the Treaty of Tilsit had dried, to the point where Napoleon now referred to Tilsit as the ‘phantom alliance’, and he believed that a new war in the east seemed likely.
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The Russian elite, as we have seen, had never accepted the alliance. The new Russian ambassador to Paris in 1807, for example, Count Peter Alexandrovich Tolstoy, was hostile to both France and Napoleon: he was against the alliance, and against the proposed marriage to one of the Tsar’s sisters.
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When Napoleon complained about Tolstoy, he was replaced by Prince Kurakin, whose attitude was just as inflexible. In 1808, the Tsar’s adviser Adam Czartoryski wrote a confidential note to Alexander in which he aired his concerns: ‘Napoleon seeks only to establish his supremacy; Prussia served him, he destroyed it; Spain served him, he is going to invade it after dethroning the king, his ally.’ Czartoryski believed that Austria would be partitioned and that Russia would be the sole remaining power in Europe until Napoleon sought a passage through Russia to India; that he would re-establish Poland and so on. The only response to the French threat was secretly to arm in alliance with England, Austria and Sweden.
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Relations between the two countries became more strained after Erfurt, despite the very public displays of harmony between the two men. In fact, Alexander was carefully manoeuvring between public opinion at home, which was hostile to the French alliance (and which reflected Alexander’s true feelings) and keeping his French ally placated. The manoeuvre did not work. At home, Alexander was excoriated for the alliance – rumours of a coup abounded – while Napoleon was less than impressed by his ally’s evident lack of enthusiasm manifested in the absence of concrete military support during the campaign against Austria in 1809.
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At the beginning of 1810, Napoleon appears to have been prepared to take into consideration Russian sensitivities about the one thing that upset Alexander (and the Russians) the most, Poland. It was the major bone of contention between the two countries.
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Napoleon did nothing to help his own cause. At the Tsar’s behest, he authorized Caulaincourt to enter into negotiations with the Russian foreign minister, Nikolai Petrovich Rumiantsev, so that all four powers concerned – France, Russia, Prussia and Austria – could come to some sort of binding agreement over Poland. A draft agreement was drawn up in January 1810, but Napoleon rejected it on the grounds that he could not undertake to prevent an event that might happen as a result of conditions beyond his control. This kind of sophistry was not only not appreciated in St Petersburg, but caused consternation. Caulaincourt did his best to try to persuade Napoleon to change his mind, arguing that his stance was doing tremendous damage to the relationship, but to no avail.
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Alexander, who was insisting on these terms – that is, that Napoleon guarantee that there would be no resurrection of the Kingdom of Poland – went so far as to suggest that if Napoleon did not acquiesce he might find it hard to continue the blockade against Britain. Napoleon was understandably outraged, and declared in a letter to Caulaincourt in July 1810 that if Alexander was going to start blackmailing him, and using the Polish question as an excuse for a rapprochement with Britain – for this is what it seemed like in Paris – then there would be war.
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From that time on, relations between the two countries went into a nosedive, and both sides starting preparing for war.

Napoleon was playing a number of cards at the same time: he wanted to maintain the myth that the Polish kingdom would one day be resurrected, but at the same time he was exploring alternative foreign policy directions.
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One was a closer alliance with Austria, while the other was to help place Bernadotte on the Swedish throne, a country Russia considered to be within its sphere of influence. The offer of the Swedish throne to a relatively marginal French marshal is one of the stranger stories to come out of the Napoleonic wars.
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Relations with Bernadotte had always been strained, a relationship made worse by Bernadotte’s opposition to Bonaparte’s power, and by his poor performance in the field, notably at Wagram. In 1810, he was about to be sent to Rome as its new governor when he was ‘elected’ heir to the Swedish King Charles XIII, who was childless and in poor health. The proposal was made on the initiative of a member of the Swedish Diet, Baron Karl Otto Mörner, who acted entirely on his own initiative. In fact, the Swedes were so dumbfounded that Mörner was arrested. It took some time for their government to warm to the idea, but they eventually came around to it. When Bernadotte told Napoleon of the offer, he agreed on condition that Bernadotte sign a document saying that he would never take up arms against France. Bernadotte refused, arguing that he could not accept ‘foreign vassalage’. In the end, Napoleon relented and did not oppose Bernadotte’s election as crown prince, thinking that either the king, Charles XIII, would be around for a while longer yet, or that Sweden was an insignificant player. He may have been glad to be rid of a troublesome marshal. Nor did Napoleon think at all about how this would be seen in St Petersburg. The creation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the recent marriage alliance with Austria and now the election of a French marshal as the Crown Prince of Sweden all gave Russia the impression that it was being encircled.